Process

Firstleaf is a subscription wine club powered by a machine learning recommender system that learns what you like about wines, and delivers those wines to your home.

In late 2019, Firstleaf decided to add on an ecommerce store to accompany the subscription service.

My digital product design team was solicited to create the UX and UI for the ecommerce store. We began discussions with the Firstleaf co-founders to gain a better understanding of the service and their desired project outcome. My team absorbed the provided historical domain knowledge.

We then began rough wireframe experimentation and divergent brainstorming to make headway on the project. We discovered that in addition to needed an ecommerce store, Firstleaf also would greatly benefit from a robust UI library.

There were many examples of the UI not being standardized. Different button types on different pages, different font colors on different pages, and a non-standardized typographic system.

We decided that a basic card-based layout for each of the varieties of wine would give us a standardized unit to jump off from. We met weekly with the two co-founders, growth lead, and dev team from Firstleaf to discuss the implications, feasibility, and development hurdles involved with our initial exploration and concepts.

The filtering system is an example of a challenging portion of the ecomm store design. Filtering existed in a limited capacity but we felt it crucial for the user experience for the ecomm store. We examined the taxonomy and data structure of the wine inventory system and developed a filtering pattern that best served the quantity, varieties, and availability of the individual wines and total inventory at large.

The ecommerce store was eventually completed, and developed. The live store can be found here: https://www.firstleaf.club/store

In early 2020 COVID-19 began it’s rapid spread in our operating home of New York City.

As with many online stores, this had serious implications for Firstleaf. They saw a rapid and unprecedented increase in order volume. While the initial intention of our product design engagement was meant to be in the 3-4 month range, it became clear that there were dividends to be made by bolstering additional portions of the product and company beyond the initial scope of the ecommerce store.